Spread out: Much of the Help to Buy home sales have been outside the property hotspots of London and the South East. Click to enlarge.

More than 5,000 new build properties have been purchased under the Help to Buy equity loan scheme with first-time buyers snapping up most of the loans, official figures show.

The number of new homes being built rocketed by 30 per cent in the first six months after Help to Buy was launched, in comparison with same period in 2012.

The average price of a property bought under the scheme was £194,167.

At a headline level on the 5,375 properties sold that will have delivered the government a stamp duty boost of almost £10.5m.

Data released by the government
reveals that 4,948 first-time buyers, representing 92 per cent of
purchasers, got on the property ladder in the first six months of the
scheme between April and September 2013.

At the same time 427 previous homeowners took advantage of the scheme to move house, following its launch at the end of March,

Private
enterprise new housing starts totalled 50,310 between April and
September compared to 38,610 in the same months of 2012.

But
while Help to Buy's architects will claim this is a sign the scheme is
getting more homes built, rising new housing starts is continuing a
trend that began in summer 2012.

The Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme
offers an interest-free loan for five years from the government that
boost a borrower's 5 per cent deposit by up to 20 per cent for a
mortgage on a new build property worth up to £600,000.

Once that five years is up borrowers
will start to pay a low rate of interest on their loan, starting at a rate of 1.75 per cent.

The aim of the government scheme is to make it easier for borrowers to raise the deposit needed for good mortgage rates.

The data shows while buyers can put down more than 5 per cent, 73.2 per cent opted to only pay the minimum while 15.7 per cent had a deposit of between 5.1 per cent and 10 per cent.

Income watch: Most sales were to people with incomes up to £50,000

Buyers were mainly spread across households with individual or joint incomes between £20,000 and £50,000.

A fifth of borrowers had
household incomes of £40,001 and £50,000.

According
to the figures, 27.2 per cent of completions came from households with
incomes of between £30,001 and £40,000 a year while 22.5 per cent of
completions had applicants with a registered household income of between
£20,001 and £30,000 a year, with 4.6 per cent of completions with
applicant household incomes lower than this.

A third of the transactions were on properties worth between £150,000 to £200,000 with a fifth between £200,000 and £250,000.

There were only 26 purchases for properties worth between £500,000 and £600,000.

The transaction have been dotted around the country as the map on the right shows, rather than being concentrated n the South East and London as many feared.

Key figures: Almost 5,000 have got on the property ladder with the Help to Buy equity loan

Is Help to Buy working?

The Help to Buy Equity Loan aims to support builders and buyers.

The idea is that buyers find a developer or builder nearby who is offering a property under the scheme.

The buyer then deals with a Help to Buy agent and a financial adviser to get a mortgage from a participating bank and a loan from the government worth up to 20 per cent of the property value that is interest free for the first-time buyers.

The early data suggests the scheme is giving buyers a boost.

However, questions will be asked about whether some could afford to fund the mortgage themselves or even put down a bigger deposit, especially with incomes above £50,000.

Does this mean we are building more homes?

Help to Buy has been a boost for builders as well with corresponding figures from the government on new builds showing 44,150 private homes completed in the April to September 2013 period.

This is up from 42,830 in the same period of 2012, but only by 3 per cent.

Crucially, however, more homes are starting to be built. There were 26,380 private enterprise housing starts from July to September, up from 23,930 the previous month.

Housing starts were 50,310 between April and
September in total compared to 38,610 in the same six months in 2012.

However, building was already going up last year as the graph below shows

New builds: The number of new build developments was increasing even before Help to Buy started

Some of this could be down to Help to Buy’s distant cousin NewBuy.

NewBuy is the older largely forgotten offspring of the government’s housing policy.

The NewBuy scheme was launched by the government in March 2012 to help borrowers get a new-build home in England worth up to £500,000 with a deposit of between 5 and 10 per cent deposit.

It is a three-year scheme aiming to help up to 100,000 people by a home, so it will end in March 2015.

The government data released today shows there have been NewBuy 4,450 completions since 2012, this hit its highest quarterly level of 1,477 in the three months before Help to Buy was launched.

There were 909 completions in NewBuy’s first year.

WHAT NEXT FOR HELP TO BUY AND NEW BUILD HOMES?

The figures are positive reading for
the housing market but as we hit the winter months the development of
new builds is likely to slow and the emergence of the Help to Buy
mortgage guarantee may well overshadow and push out the equity loan and
NewBuy schemes.

As a point of comparison with the new build scheme's just over 5,000 buyers in six months, it was claimed that 2,000 Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme loans were taken out in its first month.

The growth of the mortgage guarantee scheme will test the banking industry’s commitment to the equity loan and NewBuy.

So far only HSBC, RBS, NatWest and Halifax
have launched rates under the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme,
which provide 95 per cent loan-to-value mortgages backed by a government
indemnity of up to 20 per cent.

More lenders are likely to launch
rates in the New Year and other banks and building societies have
launched their own low deposit mortgages in recent weeks.

A borrower looking for a 5 per cent
mortgage has more choice now compared with when the NewBuy and equity
loan schemes were launched.

If you take the equity loan
route you will also have to worry about repaying the equity loan from the
government after five years, which could see the second phase becoming
more attractive.

The best choice of mortgages with a lower deposit starts at 10 per cent.

Skipton Building Society
has a popular fee-free two-year fix at 3.99 per cent. Using this rate
on the average house price of £164,653 would cut your payments to £780 a
month, showing the benefits of saving for a bigger deposit.